FEBRUARY 2018

Viola had fallen a little in love with the idea – sacrificing herself for the sake of the Eldest Girls.

She would be a martyr like St Rita, pierced in the forehead to understand the suffering of the Saviour. Or like St Jade, enduring bites from venomous snakes to stamp out evil on Lark.

Viola ceremoniously removed all her clothing above the waist – St Catherine the inspiration for this. The tapestry on the wall of their church back home showed the martyr bare-chested and proud, as she was led towards the breaking wheel.

‘You girls keep on calling out for your Oak King, your Horned God…’ This was how he announced his arrival, strutting into view, his head adorned with the horns of a goat. ‘Well, he heard you. Here he is!’

‘Men aren’t allowed any further,’ Viola told him. ‘It brings on a terrible fury.’ And she stepped beyond the brink of the circle.

As he came forward, the Eldest Girls retreated to relative safety by the hollow centre stone. Viola let her arms hang at her sides. She held her chin high. The cold was anaesthetising, but she still felt the aggression of his kiss, the teeth behind it, the way he grabbed at her breasts forcefully, more deliberately than Michael. She was doing so well, hiding her shock, masking her fear, then abruptly, where his cloying warmth had been, there was bitter winter air once again. He’d been wrenched away.

She would not be St Viola after all.

‘How could you! How could you do this to me!’ Leah was screaming, dragging him backwards, throwing him to the grass, the horns tumbling ignobly away. Leah drew back her fist and he raised his arms to his face, his knees to his belly, protecting himself from the imminent blow.

Then Leah’s arm dropped. She fell quiet. He relaxed his armour. He peered up at her.

‘Oh,’ she said

He was swearing now, getting up, brushing himself down, asking her what the fuck she thought she was doing.

‘It’s you,’ she said, and she laughed, a strangled sound that disintegrated into a strange wail of pain. ‘But that’s not your coat,’ she said, ‘you even smell like …’ They all stared at her, wondering what words, what noise, might come from her mouth next. ‘Does your mother know you’re here?’ Leah asked. ‘Does Mary?’

‘The fuck they do,’ he replied, zipping the blue parka, flipping up the hood.

Anna came forward to throw a coat around a shivering Viola.

No one spoke.

Viola was reduced now, half-naked in the freezing air.

He was palpably on-guard, disturbed by the arrival of this deranged woman.

Leah Cedars was unsteady after the directness of her initial attack, but she found the strength to take charge, falling back into a classroom role, her voice sharp as a skewer.

‘Are you hassling these girls, Luke?’

Luke Signal shook his head, not in response, but in disregard. He retrieved his gun from the grass by Viola’s feet, and the girls twitched at the way it clacked in his grip. Had he brought it for cover, to explain his business out in the wood at night, or as insurance that he would get his payment as agreed? More vitally, would he use it now?

‘Fuck this,’ said the boy, the man, eyeing them each in turn before gobbing in the grass. ‘I’ll be coming for those keys to the lodge soon, yeah, Miss Cedars,’ he said, a final, malevolent rejoinder. Then he disappeared into the gloom.

They regrouped at the base of the centre stone, where candles were lit in jam jars and they huddled for warmth. Leah Cedars leapt immediately to the subject of blame. Under no circumstances were the girls to believe that they were at fault for what had happened there tonight.

Viola felt patronised by this lecture. Not their fault? She had engineered the whole thing! She might not be to blame, but she deserved the credit. Saul Cooper was now in her confidence and she would have had leverage with Luke Signal too if Leah Cedars hadn’t come blundering in.

‘The older generation are to blame,’ Leah went on. ‘The attitude of those men bleeds down into the young of the island. We grow up to think of ourselves as inevitable victims, while the boys are told they are conquerors, entitled to take whatever they want.’

Viola sighed, waiting for Leah to get to the point, or for the girls to eject the woman from their circle, whichever came first, but the others seemed to have forgotten how much they despised Leah Cedars. They were nodding along.

The teacher trained her gaze on Viola, her head on one side, to all appearances kindly, compassionate. ‘You know, you really shouldn’t have put yourself in that situation. You should never let yourself be abused in return for, well, anything.’

Viola couldn’t hold in her anger any longer. ‘Let myself be abused?’ she spat back. ‘Let myself be abused!’

‘Okay, okay,’ said the teacher. ‘That sounded wrong. That’s not what I’m saying. You know that’s not what I’m saying.’

What was she saying? Viola looked to the Eldest Girls. Why were they not jumping in to defend Viola, to argue with the woman? Why did they continue to nod so obsequiously?

‘We have to start saying no,’ Leah said. ‘We have to fight back.’

She spoke as if they were weak, as if they had been coming to the Sisters’ Stones all this time just to hide, as if they weren’t already on the frontline, battered and muddied, striving for victory.

‘You have no idea,’ Viola snapped. ‘No idea at all what’s going on.’

The Eldest Girls looked shocked at this outburst, and Viola was readying herself to let loose some fury on them too when Leah said: ‘I do.’

‘Huh?’ said Britta.

Leah looked down at her hands, at the weaving of her fingers. ‘I do know what’s going on,’ she said, such weight to her words. ‘I do know and I did, I mean… Oh, this is so hard, I’m so sorry.’ The girls’ eyes were heavy with sorrow. Their breath came in anxious hitches. ‘I mean, I think I always knew. I could see what was going on, but I couldn’t let myself see. I know this makes no sense, but you have to understand – it never happened to me, my father made sure of that, and I just couldn’t bear for it to be true, because I love this island so much. I just decided that it wasn’t true, that it was… I don’t know… impossible! And I made up all those excuses for myself, for why my friends were running away to the mainland, I built up this fortress of denial, but then my brother left because of it, and my father died, and I just couldn’t…’ Leah broke down. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she cried, ‘I’m just so, so sorry.’ The Eldest Girls gave vent to their tears then, the four of them falling into one another, hugging desperately.

Viola stood separate, observing this – the outsider again, the coycrock.

‘You told me you had no brothers or sisters,’ she said, something to break them apart, anything to discredit Leah. ‘You lied to me.’

Leah Cedars looked up from their embrace to smile dopily at Viola, as if this was apology enough. High on her confession, the teacher continued in earnest – Luke Signal should be brought to justice, she told the girls. They should stand up in chapel and speak the truth of what he’d done, get the congregation behind them. Then, they could start talking about everything else.

The girls dipped their chins; they backed away.

‘No,’ said Anna firmly. ‘No one will believe us. They’ll think like you did, that it’s all impossible.’

‘I’ll back you up,’ said Leah, ‘I’ll be a witness.’

The girls flickered glances at one another.

Viola said aloud what they were scared to. ‘And who will listen to you? Everyone on the island thinks you’re insane.’

The teacher sniffed proudly and turned to Viola, squaring her shoulders: ‘So, what would you suggest?’

That you fuck off and leave us alone.

‘We have our own means,’ she told Leah. ‘Our own methods.’

Leah held Viola’s gaze, as if checking the temperature of their exchange.

There was silence, into which the teacher gave a great, withering sigh, before saying: ‘And the photos?’

The girls’ heads lifted, guilty, as one – Viola’s too. Leah Cedars had seen the images?

‘What photos?’ said Jade-Marie too quickly.

Leah inhaled a steadying breath. ‘The ones Ben… Mr Hailey… took of you.’

She was biting back fresh tears, pushing down a feeling too awful to expose – but she had exposed herself. Viola could see it then, piercingly obvious – the real reason Leah Cedars had come to the stones that night. She had expected that horned god to be Benjamin Hailey. That was why her temper had run to fire one minute, then was immediately doused. She wasn’t here out of any love for the girls, she was here for herself, for Mr Hailey.

Viola grinned.

This was where her Eldest Girls would step in. They liked the new teacher from the mainland; they adored him. He had made their time at school so much more interesting, more tolerable, they said. He was funny, he was cool, but most importantly, he was theirs. They would not stand for Leah Cedars accusing him of something so terrible as taking naked photographs of them. Viola waited for them to put Leah straight, to defend their dearest teacher. Oh, no, not Mr Hailey! How could you believe for a moment it had been him!

But they didn’t say that.

Jade-Marie spoke falteringly. ‘Oh, he took those photos for a… a… a project we’re doing together.’

There was quiet. A tealight puttered out, casting its spiral of smoke into the cold air. Jade-Marie cringed almost imperceptibly, but Viola caught it; she had spoken out of turn. A look passed between the girls. There was a secret here, one that Viola was not party to. The idea that they would hold something back from her, something this huge, struck Viola like a punch.

‘No!’ said Leah forcefully. ‘That just isn’t right.’

On this, at least, were Viola and Leah in agreement?

‘You have to speak out about Ben,’ Leah went on. ‘This is our way to open it all up. The island will believe you if you accuse him, because that man is an outsider.’